Pentagon Will Likely Clear iPhone and iPad Next Week

Come next week, there will be a new mobile device manufacturer competing for lucrative U.S. military contracts: Apple.

Late Friday, the U.S. Defense Department said it expects to green-light Apple devices running iOS 6 for use on its networks sometime next week, granting them the same security approvals it issued to BlackBerry and Samsung last week.

Good news for Apple, though it will be awhile before the company can reap its benefits. Military certification of its iPhone and iPad is the first step in a longer process that also requires the creation of a mobile device management system to secure them. And the contract to develop that isn’t expected to be awarded until early summer.

So the DOD approval of the iPhone and iPad isn’t going to result in immediate product orders for Apple. But it may result in some significant ones in the future. And not just from the Pentagon, which currently has about 600,000 mobile devices in the field, but from any entity with a need for highly secure mobile devices.

As I’ve noted here before, certification by the Pentagon is the gold standard in mobile device security. And it opens the door to all manner of lucrative contracts from customers in government and tightly regulated industries like healthcare and finance.

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